Hannah Nannan’s
foxgloves
Hannah Nannan’s foxgloves was as tall as she was. And she looked kind of like them. Pointy and bright at the top. Flouncy and plain at the bottom. And wider there too.
You know how some people take up much more space than they actually inhabit? That was Hannah Nannan. She was short, but her energy charged a field of activity around her. Ideas, opinions, facts, projects, meals, children in a quantum blur. People remembered her as much bigger than the tall spikes of her patchwork colored foxgloves.
Her hair came to a point at the top of her head as if to antenna her broadcast. But she was bright. “Windy,” was what she called herself. But witty was what other people thought. Partial to smocked bodices and backs, she was. Each tuck sometimes a different pastel.
Dark skirts, full enough to cover a figure built broad. Mr. Nannan’s children, letting herself go, no more exercise than chores and housekeeping and her garden, there bending to the foxgloves, it was quite a profile from the back.